Word: hizballah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even as Israel extends its military's reach deeper into Lebanon, the war there may now increasingly be more about perception than position. After three weeks of fighting, the tenacity of Hizballah's fighters in the face of fierce Israeli air and ground assaults, and their continued ability to lob rockets into Israel, has created a problem of perception for both Israel's leaders and the Bush Administration. The Israeli public has been questioning whether the war is actually being won, while Hizballah's survival as a fighting force and its ability to exact a price from Israel has boosted...
...that reason, the U.S. and Israel need to transform both the reality on the battlefield and the view of the outcome before any kind of truce takes effect. Israeli commando forces staged a raid in Baalbek, deep inside Hizballah's heartland, overnight Wednesday, capturing five of the organization's fighters in an operation that may have been designed to boost Israel's morale by recalling the bold audacity of raids deep inside enemy territory on which Israelis' confidence in their military is founded - from the lightning preemptive air strikes of June 1967, to the 1976 commando raid that rescued more...
...Israeli officers themselves have been impressed by the tenacity of Hizballah's fighters: They have not flinched from engaging despite the Israelis' overwhelming advantages of airpower, armor and artillery. Instead, they're putting up strong resistance throughout the south, operating with a high degree of guerrilla professionalism in small, autonomous units that have prepared for six years to fight the Israelis on home turf. They have laid in supplies of food and ammunition, negating the requirement for short-term resupply. And rather than melting away before the advancing Israeli columns, Hizballah fighters are actually seeking out concentrations of Israeli forces...
...Israel's strategy is now premised on the arrival in the not-too-distant future of an international security force in south Lebanon. Until then, Israel is attacking Hizballah strongholds to degrade its military capability, while notably keeping its own forces mobile, rather than trying to hold the towns they have attacked. Digging in would require the establishment of supply lines and logistical support, and offer Hizballah just the sort of sitting-duck Israeli targets on which it thrived during Israel's two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel lost around 2,000 men in Lebanon over that period...
...latitude for error. "In the morning I look in the mirror and I ask myself: "Am I happy with what I'm doing? There's no absolute truth, no absolute morality. I'll do everything I can to prevent killing innocent people. But if I see that Hizballah is firing rockets from Lebanese houses, and it's going to put my soldiers, my civilians in Haifa or wherever, in danger, then I'll put my own people first. I have to." Still, in the heat of battle, that clarity doesn't make a pilot's split-second, wrenching decisions...